YMMV / Event Horizon: Storm of Magic

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is The Company™ truly noble and really wants to help the people of the four planets of the Epsilon Eridani System modernize and improve their lives or just a Greedy, Hypocrite and Lying MegaCorp who only acts friendly to the locals so they can exploit them and steal their resources for their own gain?
  • Fred Kovacs. A Nice Guy who really wants to help out but suffers from unfortunate circumstances out of his control or just an Idiot who so full of himself who does things not for others but for himself and refuses to accept responsibility when things go bad?
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The Lighter and Softer tone clashing with the Darker and Edgier half-human, half-orc hasn't brought a whole lot of the audience joy, often due to the allegorical nature that tries to get sandwiched in between—even when Rule of Perception has already been at play for longer periods of time.
  • A pretty gratuitous example of this trope for Littlefinger: one of his hired thugs kicks Arya's direwolf Nymeria and later kills her offscreen.
  • The Company™ will often be instigators of quite a few of these, with the odd Pet the Dog moment that fans will state is worth a watch. The in-universe report filed in the wake of the mission to Vaes Dothrak shows just how little regard or respect they have for the "primitive natives", viewing them either as "assets to be acquired" or as "obstacles to be removed". In the report, it's even mentioned that before they settle colonists in Essos, The Company plans to enact a "Final Solution to the Dothraki Problem"...
  • Later on, they double down by deciding that once the War Of Five Kings breaks out, The Company™ can and will take advantage of the chaos of the conflict to secretly purge any noblemen they see as an obstacle to their plans. The list of targets actually included Ned Stark at first, but Fred used his veto power to spare him.
  • Later on, over on EE-L5, the Company has King Theoden assassinated, and plants evidence implicating Grima Wormtongue in the murder.
• Base-Breaking Character: The character of Fred Kovacs was created, as per Word of God, as the comic relief and as a parody of some real life business' practices of promoting some people to well above their competency level. All the same, some of his immature behavior can rub some readers the wrong way while others think it makes him a more memorable character compared to the rest of the OC cast.
• Broken Base:
  • The series as a whole is pretty comedic and tongue-in-cheek, but some readers may find that some chapters take the levity a little too far.
  • The Council Of Elrond chapter went over-the-top with the humor and parody. It has since been cut from the story.
• Funny Moments: While a lot of the comedy is rather YMMV, there's a few gems in the story.
  • Arya develops a fondness for Sky-People music, and refers to Michael Jackson as "a powerful necromancer who could summon hordes of undead to dance with him, as well as change the color of his skin".
  • Fred Kovacs, while not dumb enough to talk that way around the actual nobles, is a good deal less formal in private, like you'd expect a middle-class white collar worker from Earth to be.
• Dancing Bear: in addition to crossing the notoriously GRIMDARK A Song of Ice and Fire and Warhammer Fantasy settings with a sci-fi Space Opera, complete with robot girls and lasers, the writer has also made them more comedic and over-the-top and injected full of pop culture references.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • The most prominent instance of this is when Fred and VENI infiltrate the Lannister army and shoot Tywin Lannister. Fred then proceeds to give him what amounts to an Eviler than Thou speech as he helplessly bleeds out from his gunshot wound. After he dies, they remove his head and, along with the heads of Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch, offers them as a gift to the Martells.
  • As mentioned above, The Company™ frames Grima Wormtongue for the murder of King Theoden.
  • A U.N. Peacekeeper shoots Saruman in the face after witnessing his breeding chambers.
• Squick: How the Uruk-Hai are created in this TL. Saruman has his forces capture human women and forcibly breeds them with orcs in his breeding pits. When UN marines raid the location, one of the female marines has a Heroic BSoD when she sees a chained up pregnant girl and realizes what was going on.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In Book 1: the death of Arya's direwolf Nymeria. Made all the more surprising and jarring in that this is a character very much still alive in the original story, and who had just escaped a dangerous situations in the previous chapter.
  • The funeral after the Battle of Outpost B.
  • Also in Book 1, the aftermath of The Battle Of Red Fork and all the needless death and devastation caused by the war. The Starks win, but Robb Stark still suffers a Heroic BSoD.
  • In Book 2: when the Marines discover how Saruman has been breeding Uruk-Hai; see Squick above.

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